


to the river to wade, to bathe

by nbsherlock



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Bathtubs, Bubble Bath, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Civil War (Marvel), they take a lot of baths okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-19 00:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8181016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nbsherlock/pseuds/nbsherlock
Summary: they take a lot of baths.





	

**Author's Note:**

> (title is from come down by sylvan esso)

They take a lot of baths.

The first time is encapsulated in the flush that rolls over Steve’s skin and murmured excuses of not wanting to waste any water, still living in the past in order to hold onto this moment, Bucky’s back against Steve’s front.

There’s a twinge of anxiety in Steve’s gut when he looks at the arm and looks at the water. Vicious thoughts of electric shock that burrow into his consciousness and stay there.

The water is warm and smells lovely. They bought some kind of bath melt online after a bad reaction between store-bought bubble bath and Bucky’s skin. (They, Steve thinks. The thought that they are a unit is warmer, more comforting.)

Steve is indifferent to the bath. He is, however, partial to the feeling of Bucky’s bare skin against his. They don’t talk, not really. They breathe and sigh and Bucky twines his right hand into Steve’s and inhales deep. Bucky loves the bath. Steve loves Bucky. It is so simple, in moments like this.

Bucky sets his head back on Steve’s shoulder, Steve slumped enough that it fits there perfectly. This way Steve can see Bucky’s profile, the soft upward curve of his mouth, the slope of his nose, his eyelashes fanned on his cheeks, the flush on his too-pale skin. His fingers itch for a pencil, to sketch out this moment. The way his body heat radiates under Steve’s skin. He is white hot. The sun, the stars.

Sometimes, late at night when they can’t sleep. The air smells sweet and floral. “Tell me about before.”

And Steve paints it in long strokes with his words. The sweat dripping down his spine on the fire escape. His mother (“Sarah,” Bucky supplies) baking with shaky hands. Bucky’s crooked smile and his fumbling hands around a girl’s waist.

Everything is a secret, here; Bucky whispers, “were you jealous?” and it’s a complicated question. They are pressed so intimately together but have yet to kiss or touch past the bath and hands twined together in their too-big too-comfortable bed.

Steve closes his eyes and smiles. “Of who?”

Bucky grins. It’s a sharp, stabbing pain in Steve’s chest. “Me, a‘course. Knew you always had crushes on the dames I went with.”

“Shuddup,” Steve grumbles.

They play this game for hours. Bucky tucks his face into Steve’s neck and breathes. The water goes cold.

–

Steve tells Sam.

“You and Barnes doing okay?”

And Steve wants to act put out. Like he doesn’t want to talk about it. But he does. God, he does.

“We’ve been taking baths together.”

The sound of their shoes slapping the concrete, their harsh breath. One of the benefits of disclosing personal information while running: no awkward silences.

“Baths?”

“Yeah, like with, uh, bath melts and stuff. Bucky likes it. It calms him down.”

“Do you like it?”

He likes Bucky being happy. Baths make Bucky happy. “Yeah. I really do.”

–

Bucky trails wet fingers along Steve’s arm. “Did we touch before?”

Steve breathes. smiles a little. “Believe it or not, we used to take baths together.”

Bucky looks back at Steve. Hums, considering that. “Anything else?” As if they are doing a whole lot else at current.

“Uh,” Steve says. Hot, wet, suffocating memories of mouths pressed desperately together, Bucky’s hand shoved in Steve’s briefs, Steve’s teeth buried in Bucky’s neck. “No.”

Bucky narrows his eyes, and then turns to face forward. “Wash my hair.”

–

They get in bed like any other night. Steve wears boxer briefs and a t-shirt. Bucky tends to wear the same, unless he foregoes a shirt, which he has chosen to do tonight. Bucky twines his legs with Steve’s and presses up close, wraps an arm around him.

He asks about before.

Steve tells him about the smell of their apartment, the smell of their bed. The bathtub in the kitchen. The mattress on the splintering hardwood. Bucky’s job by the docks. Steve’s first kiss. The time Becca slapped Steve in the face (after he kissed her best friend). The view from the fire escape. The bruises on Bucky’s knuckles. The art class they took together (Bucky was not an artist, but had the voice of a real crooner) when they first heard about Pearl Harbor. The look on Bucky’s face when he found out he got assigned to the 107th.

And Bucky kisses him. He kisses him gentle and nervous and then pulls away and grins so crooked and annoying and says, “sorry, I’m a little out of practice” and Steve has to kiss him again.

–

Steve tells Natasha.

“I kissed him. Well, he kissed me.”

Nat stares at him.

“We kissed,” he explains.

Dry and sarcastic, “good for you,” but her eyes mean it. Her lips turn up, as if against her own volition.

–

“We touched, before.”

That is what Bucky calls sex. ‘Touching’. As if the brush of his hand on Bucky’s shoulder equates to what he’s referring to.

“We did,” Steve nods.

“Why’d you lie?”

Steve looks at his hands, one wrapped in Bucky’s hair. Bucky’s head rests in his lap. A movie is playing on the tv but neither of them are watching it. “Didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Bucky coughs out a laugh, the sound still harsh and awkward. He turns his head to press his face into Steve’s abdomen. His lips move but Steve can’t hear him.

–

They touch in the bath.

–

They touch in their bed. And then on the couch and then on the floor and then on their bed again.

Bucky’s chest is all flushed and it climbs up his neck and curls around his ears and he is so undeniably beautiful that Steve has to roll over and whisper it over and over again into his neck.

Bucky bats at him, giggles pushing up his throat into the air around them.

–

They always end up back in the bath. Their skin sweat slick and smelling, frankly, awful and like sex and neither of them admit it but they’d just lay in it for hours if they could. Soak up the smell of them, together.

Bucky hums. He shuts his eyes and tilts his head back against Steve’s shoulder.

“You okay?” Steve says.

“Better than.”

“Tired?”

Bucky considers this. They both rarely get tired, but as an aftermath to how often they’ve been… touching, they find themselves tired more often than not. “Yeah,” Bucky says.

“You ready to get out?”

Bucky swims his hand through the water and laces his fingers through Steve’s. “Couple more minutes.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> thx for reading, comments nd kudos are appreciated, hmu at @jbbrnes on tumblr if u want to chat!


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